Yesterday, I introduced writer Tom Robertson to the SynEARTH network. Here are three more samples of his writing.
Economics
Tom Robertson
Folks, to a large extent, economists, have become the “official” keeper of the definitions of energy, ecology, and practically everything else in our society.
Economists are dominated by the belief that growth in production, consumption, and consequent wealth in human society is a nearly infinite process. The only real limits are human demand and inventiveness. To economists, economic growth is unconstrained by finite resources, including energy, as the primary attribute of progressive societies. Economists tell us that the marketplace, if left to function on its own, devises certain ìefficiencies” which resolve resource problems by substitutions, including technological invention, innovation, and the availability of cheap energy.
Unfortunately, while economic analysis is very good at much of what it does, it breeds potential for disaster when it is depended upon to do what it cannot do. Despite the protestations economists are certain to evoke, economic studies must be complemented with analytical tools and procedures which let users see the physical/ecological structure and processes within which human society lives and upon which economic processes depend for their existence and function. These perceptual and analytical tools–which of course includes economics–can be selected on the basis of their appropriateness to meet users needs. In these more complete and accurate analytical processes, objective physical measures of energy storages and flows complement subjective cultural money measures to identify and quantify the circumstances and propensities related to system’s structure, behavior, component relationships, and competitive tendencies.
Thus, economic studies address subjective human values as set in markets, most often using money as a value indicator. The bounds and limitations of economics are clearly stated by Nobel Laureate economist Paul Samuelson and his colleague William Nordhaus. In their popular college economic text, they provide a definition of economics that most economists would agree with. Their definition involves: humans choosing; alternative uses of scarce productive resources; in order to produce various commodities; and distribute them for consumption; now or in the future; among various persons or groups in society.*
In other words, the central focus of economic analysis is the study of human choice-making–the choice to buy and the choice to sell.
Economics treats the human process of choice-making as the dominant factor in satisfying human wants.
The primary choice-making arena in economic analysis is society and its marketplaces.
To the extent one needs a true understanding of the condition, behavior, and tendency of all systems of interest, the above definition means that economics as it is now known has critical shortcomings:
That which is not open for choice by humans in their society is, by the above definition of economic study, invisible to human concerns. Non-choice factors in the economic process, if not ignored by the study of economics, are only addressed indirectly and with great difficulty.
Economic study is further limited because the dominant arena of choice is the market-place, and the overwhelming tendency of economics to denominate the values placed on choice exclusively in the inherently subjective terms of money.
As Tolstoy was saying in War and Peace, and our experience is increasingly showing us, it just doesn’t work that way. (This refers to the last several pages of the novel, where Tolstoy deals with the circumstances of human will and reality.
Todays uncertainty driven experiences increasingly illustrate the critical need to supplement subjective economic value measures and analysis with objective analytical processes that are based on physical measures, specifically with energy measures which complement the workings of the human economy with the (often free) work of ecosystems. These complementary perceptual/analytical processes will provide more complete indications of systems structure, behavior, and tendencies–particularly where systemic change is influenced by factors which are poorly or not at all reflected in the price/market signal processes tracked by economics.
* The actual phrase is: “Economics is the study of how people and society choose to employ scarce resources that could have alternative uses in order to produce various commodities and distribute them for consumption, now or in the future, among various persons and groups in society.” Samuelson and Nordhaus, Economics, Twelfth Edition, McGraw-Hill, 1985
Please note that this has nothing about what resources themselves have to say to us.
One other economic-related subnote:
In the PBS version of Yergin’s book, “Commanding Heights” there is a flash card with the following numbers:
Global trade in goods and services: $8 Trillion.
Global trade in currencies: $288 Trillion.
I would say that is what economists call increasing amounts of money chasing fewer and fewer goods and services…
So, as they say: Have a nice day…
Trees and Ecology
Tom Robertson
Folks, the requisite phrase here is “ecological succession,” which is the overall design process by which any ecosystem works out what it is and can be.
Ecological succession provides a working context for assessing the true value of places in terms of their ability to not just exist, but evolve in constantly more rigorous and productive ways.
Regrowth and plantation forests all tend to be “early succession” ecosystems, with low diversity, low maintenance, high “growth” of dominant species and remove and replace modes of behavior–such as in tree farms. In human terms, think commercial strips off Interstates and tract housing and market-based forms of social organization.
Later succession occurs as systems increase in diversity, self-maintenance, adaptation strategies guiding behavior. In ecological terms, these are systems heading toward climax states after a hundred or so years. In human terms, think places that have cooked in more or less stable cultures for at least fifty or so years, like the so-called “developments” of the 1950s that now have an increasingly deciduous tree canopy, with complex communities and relationships among people.
As we learn more about the circumstances of ecological succession, we will come to know more about the competitive/evolutionary design processes that can be seen to guide the behavior of just about everything there is.
Forests (again?)
Tom Robertson
Folks, a recent set of messages contained considerable discussion on the state of natural systems before and after the advent of the 1492 “New World.”
It also demonstrates how easy it is to go innocently into expounding about something without really knowing what is happening.
To begin with, all “places” are natural systems, and this does not exclude 42nd Street and Broadway in New York, Picadilly Square in London, Red Square in Beijing, and the Ginza in Tokyo. etc. All operate with the same evolutionary rules as the most pristine places on the planet.
Several years ago, a friend asked me about a tiny plant that was growing out of a crack in one of the main thoroughfares in downtown Washington, DC. You had to see that the plant was just practicing and testing for the day when it, the freeze/thaw cycles of thermal shock, and other natural systems forces could build that metro area into something more consistent with the more immediate photosynthetic structures/flows that were there a mere half-century ago.
Further, an understanding of natural systems should begin with an understanding of energy flows set in the systemic context of succession as a design process operating across all levels of natural systems behavior; from places that have never seen a human (or any other living thing)to places that appear (to humans) to know nothing but humans.
And, as you begin to see a world in successional terms, you find patterns of behavior in the ways we work our world and the in the ways it works us.
Travel by car, as I did this past week, through the great metropolitan areas of the North East United States, and you begin to see the real consequence of the past 150 or so years of profligate energy consumption: most of the places you travel through are easily classified as “weed stage” early (cultural) ecosystems, with the low diversity, low maintenance, high external power flows as represented by endless shopping malls and attendant chain stores–with little difference between one end of a 450 mile journey and the other.
And the saddest part: In all those shopping malls there are great book stores and movie theatres–as well as all the great universities you pass–there is nowhere that anyone can find a clear and compelling story of what made all of what you see happen–in the past or future.
Simply not easily available to guide our understanding is the fact that all that so-called economic progress is the product of our society’s very smart (and virtually nowhere wise) consumption of many million year old plants and other biomass–that is: 1) no longer available as it has been; and 2) is already forcing a transition (a la Enron et al) the likes of which (at least in magnitude) this world’s people have never seen.
Guess we better do something about this. My grand-kids are really going to be unhappy when they learn what happened and how little we did when we had the chance.
Economics is reposted from Energy Resources Yahoogroup. It was excerpted from a longer paper by Tom Robertson called The Epistemological Revolution. Trees and Ecology and Forests (again?) can be read in context at the Energy Resources Yahoogroup from which they are reposted.